Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

Thus, without ever traducing his faith, Gage, practicing antiquarianism of the most
conventional sort, concerned with local history and detail, was able to exert more
influence beyond his co-religionists than Milner, with much less difficulty than Lingard.
’Tis Sixty Years Since
The rotting heads of executed Jacobites remained on Temple Bar in London for
more than twenty-five years. Culloden, the last battle fought on British soil, and its
bloody aftermath, were followed by the Highland clearances and the Disarming Act of
1746, which outlawed the wearing of Highland dress. These were indications, as Hugh
Cheape, has written, of ‘the serious fear and sense of political threat’, felt by the British
government about Jacobitism and specifically the wearing of the plaid. 50 It would be
more than sixty years before George IV squeezed himself into one of the most expensive
(and extensive) kilts ever made for his journey north of the border and a little over a
century before his niece Victoria established herself at Balmoral. Even so it was a
remarkably sharp change in the political wind.
How it came about and how it resulted in the ‘Invention of Tradition’, or even
‘The Invention of Scotland’, has been explored and debated widely. The legacy of
Trevor-Roper’s work is increasingly contentious with some authors claiming more and
some less for the factual origins of present day perceptions of Scottish costume and
culture. 51 Here, my object is to see how antiquarianism, as practised by Scott and the
Sobieski Stuarts, contributed to the creation of the Hanoverian Highlands. It was a
process in which antiquarian activities, notably the use of oral history and the discovery,
50
Cheape, Tartan: the highland habit, p. 39.
51
Cheape Tartan: the highland habit, p.12, accuses Trevor-Roper of ‘shallow misapprehension’ and an
over-reliance on the ‘bigoted badinage’ of Dr Johnson. See also Kidd, ‘Lord Dacre and the Politics of the
Scottish Enlightenment’; Ferguson, ‘A Reply to Professor Colin Kidd on Lord Dacre’s Contribution to the
Study of Scottish History and the Scottish Enlightenment’ and Kidd, ‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship and
Demonology in Scottish Historiography: a reply to Dr Ferguson’.
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